An Introduction to Dharmic-Ethics

Sujay Sood

11I would like to take up here the issue of ontology versus epistemology as it might concern a future direction of post-colonial studies. The theoretical basis for much

post-colonial inquiry has been dominantly Western and influenced in particular by post-W.W. II French thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan. In this regard, the

post-colonial theoretical model has its indisputable triumivirate in the figures of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. These three have set a formidable

standard of inquiry that has nevertheless ensured that post-colonial studies remains firmly within the bounds of Western philosophy and literary theory. Indeed, there

exists a post-colonial ethic that all too easily appropriates different ontologies from cultures across the globe into an epistemological terrain that is reductively Western. Here, analysis means first and foremost obeisance

to the vissicitudes of the sign; expression is inescapably textual, all analysis must therefore forefront not only the discursive nature of expression, but also its own moment and conditions of enunciation. Yet, isn't such post-

structuralism an epistemological consequence of a "dedicated line"--I borrow the term from information technology--of Western philosophical inquiry that begins with the eminence of Socratic rationality? The post-colonial "theorist" who analyzes through a post-structural gaze does not pause long enough to wonder whether the non-Western texts under scrutiny come from an

ontological domain where thought and expression might always have been post-structural, i.e., where the Word might never have been privileged as the documentation of a rational Truth. Might not such non-Western texts have been

conceived in an ontological domain that has never been logocentric, that has never privileged rationality over irrationality, nor presence over absence, nor culture over nature? If this is indeed the case, would not such non-

Western expression need to be unraveled with the goal of understanding the contours of the truly non-Western ontology and its related ethics, as opposed to exposing its structural blind-spots or post-structural complicities? The future of post-colonial studies, then, lies in adressing and assessing the hitherto ignored domain of ontological difference between Western and non-Western expressions. This would require, first and foremost, an

investigation of the ontology which philosophical inquiry takes as its a priori condition of possibility. It is of

the greatest significance, e.g., that a specific kind of activity goes by the name of "philosophy" in the European tradition--philosophy as the love of wisdom pursued through rational inquiry, while its name in the Indian tradition is darshana--the search for an intuitive vision of the truth. Spivak briefly notes the issue of Darshana in A Critique of Post-colonial Reason: "Much can be made of the fact that darsana [sic]--vision--is usually translated as "philosophy,"...the alternative usage, the felicity of constituting the transcendental object as object of the gaze, at once points to the difficulty of violating a cultural text by translation" (ftn 67). In my opinion,

Spivak misreads darshana since she remains firmly grounded in Western ontology; darshana does not constitute the

"transcendental object" as "object" of the "gaze;" quite to the contrary, objecthood itself becomes a meaningless category within the scheme of intuitive darshanic vision.1 Notable in contrast is Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan's emphasis on the difference between darshana and philosophy: Indian philosophy makes unquestioned and extensive use of reason, but intuition is accepted as the only method through which the ultimate can be known...Reason is not useless or fallacious, but it insufficient...One does not merely know the truth in Indian philosophy; one realizes it. [To see] is to have a direct intuitive experience of the object, or, rather, to realize it in the sense of becoming one with it" (Sourcebook xxvi). Furthermore, I would like to argue that the very nature of ethics varies as a function of its ontology. This would mean that the nature of ethics in the Western context of Death and Other(ing) differs radically from the nature of ethics in an Indian context of the ontological non-existence of Death and, therefore, of the extension of the Self as Atman. The ethical nature of action, and the

imperatives for responsibility must turn out to be significantly different in a world in which responsibility might either be an art of negotiation with the Other (Western), or else be a continuous realization of the Self as Atman. An interesting text with which to engage ontology and ethics in the fields of post-colonialism and post-modernism presents itself in Jacques Derrida's recent and enigmatic Gift of Death. Derrida pointedly organizes his analysis of

responsibility, ethics and duty around the "theologico1

Ithink,further,thatherequationofTheorein(tosee)withDarshana(vision)ismisleading,since theformerconnotesaprocessofdemonstrationandverification,whilethelatterconnotesthe insufficiencyofrationalexercise.

political" domain prescribed by the religions of the "Book," i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Given that

Derrida's dissection of the failure of responsibility in recent European history is founded on the iteration of God as the Absolute Other, as absolute alterity, and on the Self's as well as the Other's irreplaceable singularity, I find his enthusiasm as spokesperson-at-large for all humanity rather curious: Isaac's sacrifice continues every day. Countless machines of death wage a war that has no front. There is no front between responsibility and irresponsibility but only between different appropriations of the same sacrifice...Sacrificial war rages not only among the religions of the Book and the races of Abraham...but between them and the rest of the starving world, within the immense majority of humankind [who] don't belong to the people of Abraham...(70, see also 79). Is Derrida's text here not just another instance of the inclusionary violence of Western logocentrism? In spite of

recognizing the existence of non-conforming traditions and cultures Derrida conforms them within an economy of sacrifice based upon a Self/Other ontology. The question

of the moment is why continue to address the issue ethics and responsibility with a gloss-over attitude towards nonEuropean conceptions? Can an economy of sacrifice such as

it is demonstrated in the Bhagavada Gita, e.g., be so readily subsumed under the economy of Isaac's sacrifice by Abraham?2
2

IdirectmyanalysisofIndiandarshanathroughtheBhagvadaGitanotbecauseitisthe exemplarytextofIndianthoughtbutbecauseitisasuccinctexemplarofBrahmanicknowledge. Ifeelcompelledtoaddherethatduringpresentationspastandpresent,Ihavebeenquickly attacked,bythoseconversantwiththevarioussystemsofIndianthought,foressentializingthe GitaasthemostimportantofIndiandocuments.Whilethisiscertainlynotthecase,neitherin intentionnorintreatment,Iambemusedbythefactthatwhiletheyaremorethanwillingto

My answer in the project I have entitled DharmicEthics is an emphatic no: there exists an incommensurability between the Indian conception of ethics as Dharma and the Western conception of ethics as the call to responsibility. In the former, the nature of sacrifice

as yagna must be understood in its proper ontological context, one that axiomatically pronounces the nonexistence of Death; whereas in the latter, ethics is conceived of as a transaction that not only takes Death as its essential limit but also configures the ethical moment as a conference (and often, confrontation) with the absolute Other. Indeed, while the understanding of duty

and responsiblity in dharma turns on the fundamental proposition, "It is found that there is no coming to be of the non-existent / It is found that the not non-existent constitutes the real (nasato vidyate bhavo / nabhavo vidyate satah)" (Gita II-16)--in other words, on the nonexistence of death and otherness, Judaeo-Christian ethics seemingly finds its defining moment in Abraham's call to sacrifice Isaac, his call to responsibility in which God

is figured as absolute Other and to whom Abraham must respond "where there is no reason to be asked for or given." (GD 72). This incommensurable difference is very plainly an ontological issue, and it is one that must be taken up urgently in the domain of post-colonial studies. Given the

current parasitic nature of "post-colonial theory" this also means that the comparitive study that needs to take place at the intersection of Western and non-Western
remindofthepoliticizednatureoftheGitainrecentIndianhistory,theyareasequally uninterestedinunderstandingthenonWesternnatureofthevariousconcepts(suchasSattva, Rajas,andTamas)describedintheGitabutalsocommontobothVedicandUpanishadic traditions.

"philosophies" must for once be unhindered by the erroneous presupposition--one could perhaps call it an Imperial hangover--that the non-Western traditions must either conform with or map onto the Western. Elaborating and

precising this sweeping statement is the task taken up in the project ofDharmic-Ethics; for the scope of this essay, I hope that the following anecdote will serve to illustrate the point.3 In a panel chaired by the late J.F. Lyotard at Emory University, the theme of "Literature as Estrangement" was discussed (April 1997). Summing up the day's proceedings,

Lyotard observed and agreed with the panelists's presupposition that estrangement ontologically resides or dwells in language itself, and that this language or tongue (langue) is already divided from itself. The function of

literary work, then, is to intervene in this divide or fissure and "extract through its passage from the secreta of the tongue a new idiom; literature is a paroxysm between the locuteur and the language or tongue." This formulation

prompted from Lyotard the further suggestion that "one constant" exists in all literatures, namely, that literature contains a "mystery" which must be approached but always missed by the writing. Consequently, he implied

a "mysticism" in the writing of literature, by which "the writing must always respect the unknowable mystery and treat it not with devotion but with modest reverence." This formulation prompted me to ask: why does this unknowable "mystery" always figure asestrangement in literature? Why not let it be the cause of a celebration, Instead of

that is, why not celebrate this "mystery?"

3

ThatIhavechosenan"anecdote"atthisjunctureisacalculatedmove:oneofthearguments thatgetsplayedoutinmyworkistheinherently"ethical"natureofallnarrative.

experiencing estrangement through language's inability to capture, or express, or even "solve" the mystery-language's innate resistance to being positivistic or rationalistic, why not conceive of the mystery as the site and occasion of the celebration of the unknowable? In dharmic terms, then, a conception of both the literary composition and reception as works performed as a yagna or Sacrifice to the Self as Atman. The panel was non-plussed

by this formulation, primarily because they could not conceive of "sacrifice" without the ontological invocation of Death. We had reached an impasse.

Granted, Lyotard and his panel were not addressing post-colonial studies per se, but I still find their blank

reaction to an alternative manner of construing literary expression indicative of a two-fold operation that structures all academic discourse employing the "post" marker today. The first consists of the very necessary

operation of exposing the inadequacy of all Western epistemic certitude. Here, the postivist rationality that

has inhabited the very heart of the legacy of Imperialism finds itself being resisted and subverted.4 The second

concerns the ongoing search to supplement that which has been exploded: chiefly, the post-enlightenment subject, but also the certitude of projects based on transparent methodologies that aim to grasp completely the essence of their objects. In the post-modern domain where the

criterion for knowledge has become a function of its "use-

OneofmyfavoriteinterventionsofthiskindistobefoundintheAntiOedipalprojectofGilles DeleuzeandFelixGuattari.Their"machinic"visioninveststheentirezoneofhumanformations withtheflowsofdesiringproduction;ultimately,theirprojectaddressesthedeindividualized natureofsubjectformationin(de)territorializingcapitalism.Iaddressthisissueatgreater lengthinthecurrentproject.

value,"5 the definitive challenge today is to reconcile the tremendous impact of recent technologies on the lived experience of human being. It is very clearly, as Derrida

expresses it, a question of reassessing the nature of ethics and of responsibility. Nowhere are these operations more in evidence that in the projects of post-modern and post-colonial studies. With a rapidly spreading globalization of cultures through the media and information technologies, inquiries in both fields have been processing newly emergent multi-cultural environments without having the solace of what Lyotard has called the "grand narratives of emancipation" (PE 18). Post-structuralist philosophy is narrative engendered by this failure of the Western narratives of emancipation. Curiously, "post-colonial theory" is also predominantly post-structuralist. In espousing post-

structuralism, post-colonial theorists such as Spivak, Bhabha, Young et al continue to inhabit Western knowledge, and in doing so ratify Western ontology. Why is there a

continued unwillingness to re-assess the different ontological knowledge(s) available in non-Western traditions? If the first assessment of the non-West was

made through the Imperial gaze of condescension (Macaulay's Minute, is of course, epitomic of this gesture), the reassessment that has taken place in the latter half of the twentieth century continues to employ a prejudice that normalizes non-West difference into Western expectation.

Post-colonialism needs to disrupt the economy of Western

SeeJ.F.Lyotard'sThePostmodernCondition(pages4857,especially).Eachobjectofknowledge defiesmastery;nonetheless,immenseamountsoffinancial,scientifc,andhumanresourcesare expendedtowardsattainingincreasinglymorecomplexknowledgeoftheobjectbeing "mastered."Utilityhasthusbecomethevalidatingcriterionofknowledge.

discourse by taking up the option to discover the alternative ethical formations of non-Western ontologies. Dharmic-Ethics takes up this task. It is a matter

here of engaging a comparative study between the differing natures of Western and non-Western ethics. Specifically,

the Judaeo-Christian domain of Western ethics is engaged through Derrida, Levinas, Deleuze and Guattari, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, while the non-Western is localized in the Brahmanic tradition of Hinduism. My choice and treatment

of the latter is not motivated by the supposedly commonplace nativist position Robert Young decries in White Mythologies : those who evoke the "nativist" position through a nostalgia for a lost or repressed culture idealize the possibility of that lost origin being recoverable in all its former plenitude without allowing for the fact that the figure of the lost origin, the other that the colonizer has repressed, has itself been constructed in terms of the colonizer's own self-image (WM 168). I must assert to the contrary that while my position circumscribes Hinduism, it is not marked by nostalgia for a "lost" or "repressed" culture. It will be instructive here

to turn to Ashis Nandy's "alternative mythography of history which denies and defies the values of history" in The Intimate Enemy. Nandy makes an important contribution

against the predominantly Western bias informing most if not all of post-colonial discourse in academia by turning to the "non-modern" tradition of ethnic universalism that has remained vibrant before, during, and after the experience of Imperial colonization. India, Nandy

emphasizes throughout, is not "non-West; it is India." Granting the transformation that "mimics' Western structures and attitudes, Nandy reminds us that this

"modern" section of India is a small minority compared to the "ordinary Indian [who] has no reason to see himself as a counterplayer or an antithesis of the Western man" (73). Nandy thus claims that the pre-colonial India has neither been lost nor repressed but has always existed in its own peculiar indigenous fashion of accommodation and adjustment: This is the underside of non-modern India's ethnic universalism. it is a universalism which takes into account the colonial experience, including the immense suffering colonialism brought, and builds out of it a maturer, more contemporary, more self-critical version of Indian traditions...India has tried to capture the differential of the West within its own cultural domain, not merely on the basis of a view of the West as politically intrusive or as culturally inferior, but as a subculture meaningful in itself, though not all-important in the Indian context (75-76). My argument here for the reason this ethnic universalism exists and operates as Nandy describes it is due to the nature of a culture whose traditional self-definition has not been premised on an ontology co-terminous with the Western ontology of Self/Other, but on that of the Self as Atman. In my effort to mobilize a comparative study that doesn't subordinate the non-West to the West, I must say that I find problematic Spivak's dismissal of the like with her statement that, "I cannot understand what indigenous theory there might be that can ignore the reality of nineteenth century history...To construct indigenous theories one must ignore the last few centuries of historical involvement" (PC 69, emphasis mine). belief that indigenous theory would need to be "constructed" is perplexing given the vast and extant theoretico-philosophical texts within the Indian tradition. Are we to believe that the tradition they are a part of is Spivak's

de facto inadequate to explain the meaning of "human" events in the last four hundred years of the experience of Imperial colonization? The nature of Spivak's dismissal resides in her valorization of textual practices which inform the various narratives of our subjecthood. Her project signals the

urgency for initiating strategies of deconstructive resistance against all resultant systems whose proclivity is absolutism of one kind or another. The texts which she

investigates, without ever forgetting the textual moment of her own engagement itself, cross over not only the boundaries of history, Marxism, Western philosophy, literature, feminism, and imperialism and colonialism, but are part of a "network" or "weave"--"politico-psychosexual-socio, you name it"--whose fabric is not simply language but also the textual inescapability of our reality: "that notion that we are effects within a much larger text/tissue/weave of which the ends are not accessible to us is very different from saying that everything is language" (PC 25). But what is the In the

constitutive nature of the thread of the weave?

project entitled Dharmic-Ethics, I argue that it is ethics as primary sociality. Spivak's discourse is symptomatic of a proliferation of engagement within the domain of post-colonial and postmodern studies that is invested in playing language games armed with the tools of deconstruction. On the side of the

post-colonial, theoretical positions have been articulated in a domain that has provided the security of its immanent marginalization, whether in socio-economic, politicohistorical, or identity-racial terms. This fact has

enabled the post-colonial enterprise to adopt a self-

righteous attitude vis a vis questions that address the overlap between it and the post-modern. Indeed, the

following statement, that serves as an introduction to a recent selection of essays addressing the Postcolonial/Post-modern issue in The Post-colonial Reader, is symptomatic of a certain type of critical sleight-of-hand: "For in the final analysis, the problems of representation in the post-colonial text assume a political dimension very different from the radical provisionality now accepted as fundamental to post-modernism" (117). Such a formulation

harbors a prejudice which signifies two difficulties. First, The "problems of representation" in the postcolonial assume their political dimension by rights, that is, by the right of historical contingency. This means

that all literature in that area of the world referred to as the "Third World" must be informed by its Colonial

past, and must confront at various level(s) its National present. The textual engagement with concepts of

representation, (National) identity formation, and selfdefinition automatically attain a "political" urgency, and entail a critical reading that is above and beyond relativistic or ambivalent redactions of the post-modernist kind. This necessity functions due to a paradoxical

reversal--even though the "Third World" is criticized for being a pejorative (neo)Imperial label as it "both signifies and blurs the functioning of an economic, political, and imaginary geography able to unite vast and vastly differentiated areas of the world into a single "underdeveloped" terrain" (143), it is its very preservation that unifies the post-colonial critical discourse under one rubric. In this sense, then, it can be

argued that the Post-colonial enterprise is reactionary in its most fundamental component. Second, the post-modern is credited with a "radical provisionality" that strips its textual message of any power for "action," or for "change," according to a specific yet spurious line of reasoning that assumes the post-modern enterprise--"the deconstruction of the centralized logocentric master narratives of European culture" (117)--is content simply with the highlighting of fissure, fragmentation, ambivalence, and does not extend its deconstruction to any meaningful political agenda. It

is thus that we come across opinions such as Diana Brydon's which attach onto post-modernism the stigma of New Criticism: "[Post-modernism] updates the ambiguity so

favored by the New Critics, shifting their formal analysis of the text's unity into a psychoanalysis of its fissures, and their isolation of text from world into a worldliness that cynically discounts the effectiveness of any action for social change. (137) Implicit in this view of the

post-modern is the functioning of the label "First World;" also implicit is the belief that the post-colonial enterprise is not similarly debilitated by the cynical discounting endemic to post-modernism. It seems that by

being First-World products, post-modern texts end up being radically provisional since they are articulated in a zone of socio-politico-economic superiority, a zone that remains "First World" regardless of the alternatives suggested by the post-modern, since neither of these alternatives seeks to undermine the hegemony of the dominant power base that is the "First World." It can be argued that according to

this viewpoint the post-modern enterprise is conservative in its most fundamental component.

However, this assertion of fundamental difference the two "posts-" erases the enabling condition that is common to both post-modernism and post-colonialism. Even in the

Post-Colonial Reader, which represents a sustained dismissal of post-modernism in favor of post-colonialism, we are told that the post-modern, "the deconstruction of the centralized, logocentric master narratives of European culture," is "very similar" to the post-colonial, "[the] project of dismantling the Centre/Margin binarism of Imperial discourse." (117). Similar, but for some For what else is the

inexplicable reason, not identical.

logocentric master narrative if not the Centre/Margin binarism of Imperial discourse? And isn't "deconstruction" That which

being opposed per force to "dismantling"?

allows a reading of post-modern "deconstruction" and that which allows a reading of post-colonial "dismantling" employ the same philosophico-theoretical machinery: PostStructuralism. Indeed, the leading post-modern as well as

the leading post-colonial critics rely heavily on the conceptual positions played out by the post-structuralist philosophers. How is it, then, that the prevalent

viewpoint supports the idea of an apolitical ambivalent flux on the post-modern hand, and simultaneously supports political univalent blocks on the post-colonial hand? more importantly, why is the post-structuralist machine itself reduced into producing only the conservative postmodern or the reactionary post-colonial? But